The Best Title for Jesus?Ā He is the Lord and Servant of Creation!Ā – Dennis OrmsethĀ reflects on who the Gospel of Matthew tells us Jesus is.
Care for Creation Commentary on the Common LectionaryĀ
Readings for Sunday August 21-27, Year A (2011, 2014, 2017, 2020, 2023)
Isaiah 51:1-6
Psalm 138
Romans 12:1-8
Matthew 16:13-20
Who do you say I am? The Lord and Servant of Creation.
āBut who do you say that I am?ā asks Jesus of his disciples in the Gospel for this Sunday after Pentecost. āYou are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,ā his disciple Simon Peter answers. Our own response to Jesusā question, based on the readings we have given to the lections thus far in Year A, is this: āJesus is the Lord, the Servant of creation.ā We have argued for the validity of this new title for Jesus through a now rather extended commentary on those lections. In our comment on the readings for The Holy Trinity we summarized our reflections towards that conclusion, and we would refer our readers to that comment for the substance of our argument.
Peterās answer raises the question of the validity of our answer anew, however. Because the title of āMessiahā tends to evoke for the Christian reader a rather high Christology, our answer may seem to have less than a clear claim to be revealed by Jesusā āFather in heaven.ā It is, perhaps, more like those answers the disciples reported āpeopleā were giving, answers derived no doubt from āflesh and blood,ā which Warren Carter suggests, ādenotes the human situation before God, . . . as the inability to know God and Godās ways. It underlines the limitations of āhuman intellectual, religious and mystical capacitiesā before Godā (Carter,Ā Matthew and the Margins:Ā Ā A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading, p. 56).
Ā We acknowledge such limitations! It can be noted, however, that contrary to conventional views, there was in fact āno standard expectation of a messiah, nor did every Jew look for a special anointed figure.ā Use of the term, Carter insists, rather āraises a question. For what special task or role has God anointed or designated Jesus?ā An answer is given early in the Gospel: āHe will save his people from their sinsā (Mt 1:21). But it takes the entire gospel to develop fully what this disarmingly simple answer actually entails. The account of Peterās confession can accordingly be seen as a āsummary sceneā that ārestates the central issueā as it relates to the narrative of Jesusā story at the end of the third block of Matthewās Gospel (Mt 11:2-16:20): āHave people been able to discern from Jesusā ministry that he is Godās Christ, the one anointed to manifest Godās salvation and empire (cf. Mt 11:2-6)āĀ (Ibid., p. 332).
It seems clear that while āthe peopleā do not see in Jesus āthe Christ,ā the disciples do. On the other hand, it is not clear that the disciples know what the actual role of this Messiah is. At the conclusion of his commentary on this section of Matthew, Carter cautions that āas the unfolding narrative will show, the disciples do not yet fully understand what Jesus is commissioned to doā (Ibid., p. 337). Carter has reference, of course, to Jesusā announcement that āhe must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised (Mt 16:21), part of the Gospel reading for next Sunday. But without anticipating what that will mean for our answer, how can we presume to know more than the disciples do at this point? How legitimate is it for us to make the claim we do? What really could we know about what it means to āmanifest Godās salvation and empire,ā in Carterās phrase?
What is Jesusā mission? To be shepherd to Israel.
For Carter, an answer to this question begins to emerge from careful analysis of the context of Jesusā mission. The setting of this Sundayās gospel narrative, we are immediately informed in v. 13, is āthe district of Caesarea Philippi.ā Carter comments on this information as follows: āThe scene is set . . . some twenty miles north of the Sea of Galilee south of Mt. Hermon.Ā Ā G. W. Nickelsburg notes it as a place of revelation and commission. . . , important elements of this scene. The site had been a shrine for the god Pan, god of flocks and shepherds (Josephus, Ant 15.363-64).ā In Carterās view, this information should remind us that Matthew has already told us that Jesus is also to be known as a shepherd of his people.
The one who shepherds/governs my people Israel (see Mt 2:6), who has compassion for the crowds as sheep without a shepherd (Mt 9:36; Ezek 34), who is sent to the lost sheep of Israel (Mt 15:24), and who sends his disciples on a similar mission (Mt 10:6), the son of the shepherd David who manifests Godās reign among the marginal (Mt 9:27; 12:23; 15:22) is again recognized as Godās commissioned agent (Carter, p.332).
In this perspective, therefore, Jesus would be an alternative shepherd for the people. Thus is introduced a metaphor for the interpretation of Jesusā role that we have seen to have considerable significance for our understanding of him within the community of his followers as āThe Lord, the Servant of creation.ā If Jesus is āthe Messiah;ā he is also āthe good shepherd.āĀ Do the āpeopleā see this? No, and neither, strictly speaking, do the disciples. This is not necessarily what the title āMessiahā would have meant to them. But for the reader of the Gospel of Matthew who knows the territory and its culture, Jesusā presence there nonetheless sets up the possibility for ādiscoveryā of this meaning.
As shepherd to his people, Jesus restores people and land!
This proposal regarding Jesus as shepherd gives rise to further difficulty for our answer to Jesusā question, however. In our comment on the lections for Good Shepherd Sunday, we suggested āthe complex of relations brought to mind by [Jesusā] metaphor [of the shepherd] is incomplete without the lived-in context of the creation that shepherd and sheep share. A people or a community, centered on and founded by Jesus,Ā the servant of creation, will flourish in the context of a creation that, especially in view of the resurrection, is being restored.āĀ The first reading assigned for this Sunday actually amplifies this expectation: āFor the Lord will comfort Zion,ā the prophet writes; āhe will comfort all her waste places, and will make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of songā (Isa 51:3). As the Servant of God, Jesus would do what God would do; God, this lesson insists, restores not only the people but also the land to which they are returned. And the Messiah, the commissioned agent of God, will work to effect this restoration.Ā Ā Godās salvation includes the restoration, we might say, of the shepherdās pasture.
But is such restoration a real possibility within the territory that Jesus now enters? How can it happen, in view of the fact that there is also another claimant to lordship over this very same territory? And this is something that both the people and the disciplesĀ hadĀ to know, since it obviouslyĀ was a matter of āflesh and blood.ā The location of Caesarea Philippi, Carter notes, āalso underlines the issue of sovereignty.ā The name of the cityĀ reflects its involvement with imperial power. King Herod built a marble temple there in honor of Augustus . . . Philip enlarged the city and named it Caesarea . . . Agrippa enlarged it further and renamed it Neronias in honor of the emperor Nero . . . After Jerusalem fell (70 C.E.), Titus visited the city, and āmanyā Jewish captives were thrown to wild beasts or forced to fight each other. . . Its names, buildings (typically using local wealth [taxes and levies], labor, and materials), activities, and history attest Romeās claims and power (Carter, p. 332).
Even in land āruledā by the Roman Empire, the shepherd comes to restore the land.
Is it not then quite astonishing that it is in precisely this place that a disciple of Jesus first names him āMessiahā? On the contrary, as it is precisely in the face of this difficulty that, as Carter observes, Godās purposes for Jesus and his followers are affirmed, purposes which contest Romeās claims that Jupiter determines human affairs, that history is under Romeās control, and that the emperor is the channel for the godās blessing and presence . . . Jesus, not Rome, is the agent of Godās purposes, which will ultimately be triumphant (Ibid.)
The pasture over which this shepherd watches, to follow through the implications of our metaphor, is the very territory that the Roman army has violated and laid waste in its imperial conquest. Even into such a place the one who is Christ comes to restore the creation.
But again, how could it ever actually be accomplished? The confession made by Peter does actually suggest how this will happen, perhaps beyond his own understanding. Jesus is, after all, the Messiah, the agent ofĀ God. And more precisely, he is āthe Son of theĀ livingĀ God.ā This is perhaps the more decisive claim, in our view, as it begins to fill out the role of the Messiah by suggesting the source and purposes of his work. Carter helpfully explains the meaning of this second part of Peterās confession:
As the living God, or God of life (Deut 5:26; Josh 3:10; 1 Sam 17:26, 36, @ Kgs 19:4, 16; Pss 42:2; 84:2; Hos 1:10; Dan 6:20), God is creative, active, faithful, and just.Ā As GodāsĀ son/childĀ or agent, Jesus expresses this life in his words and healings, feedings, exorcisms, and so on (cf. 11:2-6), and in creating a community that participates in Godās empire. To recognize Jesus as Godās agent confirms that he, not the emperor, manifests Godās purposesĀ (Ibid., p.333).
Christians are a āCommunity that participates in Godās empire.ā
Hence, the things that Jesus has been doing in the Gospel readings for the Sundays after Pentecost are precisely the kind of actions we would expect of the Messiah, if we understand his work as the Servantās service to Godās creation.Ā
Is such a reading legitimate?Ā Ā Much of this, to be sure, we are reading into the text. We read it into the text from diverse sources: from the first lesson, from the scholarās careful reading of the entire Gospel in the light of what he or she knows about the cultural context, andĀ fromĀ the creationāinterested agenda of Christians concerned with care of creation. We think it appropriate to engage the text in this manner, first of all, because given the nature of these resources, together they constitute an apt proposal regarding his interaction with the historical context provided by Matthewās narrative. But equally important, especially considering that this reading takes place within the context of the Christian assembly for worship, we think it conforms to what Jesus himself anticipates will happen with Peterās confession. It builds on that confession, as Carter puts it, to create āa community that participates in Godās empire.ā
Peterās confession is the ārock.ā
The exchange between Peter and Jesus takes a surprising turn here: Having acknowledged the divine inspiration of Peterās confession, Jesus goes on to say, āAnd I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heavenā (Mt 16:19). Jesus shifts their focus from his own identity to that of Peter, and to the role that Peter and the other disciples will have in the future.Ā
This shift turns on the introduction of a new metaphor, that of āthe rock.āĀ Ā Quickly sorting the alternative interpretations of this much controverted saying, Carter takes Jesusā reference to be āPeterās faith or confession in 16:16,ā albeit as embodied in the person of Peter as āthe representative of every Christian,ā (passing over the alternatives of āChristā and āPeter the model bishopā) (Ibid., p. 334). But in the assembly this Sunday, hearers of the Gospel will catch the allusion to Isaiah 51:1 from the first lesson, for the sake of which, we surmise, the church has brought this lesson into juxtaposition to the Gospel. āLook to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug,ā says the prophet. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, but I blessed him and made him many.ā Here āthe rockā is the founding couple of Israel and their faith.Ā Ā And what does one see by looking to them? As we already noted above, we see the prophetās promise that the Lord āwill comfort Zion; he will comfort all her waste places, and will make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord.ā
To be sure, the prophet spoke in a different time and place.Ā Ā But as we noted above, he spoke about what God does, and this is what the congregation will attend to. In addition, what God does, the Messiah, Godās commissioned agent, would surely also do,Ā when and where the situation demanded it.Ā The good shepherd attends to the needs of his sheep where they are at pasture. Does āthe district of Caesarea Philippiā represent such a situation? We canāt say for sure, of course. But we can say with some confidence that Jesus himself would not contradict that possibility. His focus here is more general, but his intention is clear: Through the faith of Peter and his other disciples, Jesus will work to effect all such purposes as are consonant with the will of God for Godās empire wherever they may be called to do so.
As Carter adroitly observes, Jesusā response quickly moves the conversation to a new levels, first political and then cosmic. On the rock of Peterās confession of him as Messiah, he says, he will build hisĀ ecclesia. The word āecclesia,ā Carter insists, refers to more than we commonly understand as a religious community. āFrequently overlooked,ā he notes, “is the observation that the termĀ ekklesiaĀ is used in the political sphere. It denotes the āduly summonedā . . .civic and political assembly of citizens in Greek cities which along with a council (theĀ bouleā) expressed the will of the assembled people (demos).Ā Ā . . The assembly is not primarily cultic but political, social, cultural.Ā Ā It gathers to reinforce and administer the status quo under Roman control. As R. A. Horsley notes in discussing Paulās use of this term, by claiming the same name, the community centered on Jesus exists in āpointed juxtapositionā and ācompetitionā with the official city assembly. . .(as) an alternative society to the Roman imperial order. . . rooted in the history of Israel, in opposition toĀ Pax Romana. In Godās guidance of human affairs, history, which had been running through Israel and not through Rome,ā continues in this counter society with its alternative commitment and practices (Ibid., p. 335).
The lesson is a message directed to creation itself!
In this light, the significance of the linkage between the gospel and the first lesson for our concern for care of creation grows. The āalternative commitment and practicesā could certainly include, with full legitimacy, such activities as will further Godās will to ācomfort all (Zionās) waste placesā and to āmake her wilderness like Eden her desert like the garden of the Lord.ā
Carol J. Dempsey makes note of this possibility in commenting on the first lesson: āEmbedded in this text,ā she writes, “is a message to the natural world as well. When Israel was redeemed from exile, the people were also restored to their land, which itself was restored to life after the ravages of the battles it endured. Godās words that promise restoration to Jerusalemās waste places and deserts need to be heard by all environmentalists today working for the care, preservation, and restoration of the earth.Ā Ā Indeed God is at work in their activity and their work is a sign of Godās saving grace in our midst” (Dempsey, ‘Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost / Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time,ā in New Proclamation Year A, 2002, p. 176).
The church has a mandate to care for creation
While we agree with Dempsey, we would restate her affirmation of care of creation much more broadly to include the whole community of the church. āWorking for the care, preservation, and restoration of the earthā is something not only those who identify themselves as environmentalists do; consequent to our reading is commitment to such work as essential to the mandate of the community built on the rock of Peterās confession of Jesus as the Messiah. It is an important aspect of what those disciples are to ābind and looseā on earth, on behalf of the Father who is in heaven. As they work to understand and do āwhat Godās reign requires as declared by the scriptures and interpreted not by the religious leaders . . .but by Jesus, and by Peter and the disciples . . .all disciples are entrusted with the task of proclaiming and manifesting Godās empire (10:7-8)ā (Ibid., p. 337). Because of the situation and condition of the Earth today, it is, we believe, part and parcel of what all Jesusā followers are called out to do together, as JesusāĀ ecclesiaĀ for our time and place.
The potential consequences of such action are, Jesus promises, cosmic:Ā Ā āthe gates of Hades will not prevail againstā the work of the community so constituted and committed. āThe phrase the gates of Hades,” Carter points out, āis metonymy in which a part (gates) refers to the whole realm of Hades. . . Hades, associated with the dead, contains the demons and evil spirits of death and destruction . . . Hades attacks Jesusā community (as the rock is attacked in Mt 7:24-27; cf. 14:24). The gates of Hades open to let the attacking demons out. . . This attack is part of the eschatological woes which disciples experience as they conduct their mission before Jesusā return.Ā Ā . . . In Matthew 13:24-30, 38-39 the opposition comes from the devil. It can take all sorts of forms: domestic (Mt 10:21-22), and religious and social (Mt 10:17; 16:21), cultural (Mt 13:21-22), and political, since the devil claims control of the nations (Mt 4:8; cf. 10:17-18). But Jesus promises that this diabolical opposition will not prevail against the community centered on Jesus (Mt 13:36-43) (Ibid., p. 335).
Environmentalists: Your work is not in vain!!
Discouraged and pessimistic environmentalists, take note: Your work is not in vain. Heed the admonition of the Apostle Paul to the congregation in Rome, living in the shadow of the Empireās capital: āDo not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of Godāwhat is good and acceptable and perfectā (Rom 12:2). Working together, thinking āwith sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned,ā we will see the creation through its crisis in the good company of āthe Lord, the Servant of Creation.ā But there is also this: With Jesusā promise, comes this cautionary word in next Sundayās Gospel: If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.Ā Ā For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.ā Christian care of creation comes with sacrifice.
Who do you say I am? The Lord and Servant of Creation.
What is Jesusā mission? To be shepherd to Israel.
As shepherd to his people, Jesus restores people and land!
Even in land āruledā by the Roman Empire, the shepherd comes to restore the land.
Christians are a āCommunity that participates in Godās empire.ā
The lesson is a message directed to creation itself!
Ā The church has a mandate to care for creation
Ā Environmentalists: Your work is not in vain!!
Originally written by Dennis Ormseth in 2011.
dennisormseth@gmail.com